Blair isn't to blame for Islamist terror

Ten years ago, in November 1997, 50 Swiss tourists rose early to visit the Valley of the Kings across the Nile from Luxor in Egypt. Suddenly from the hills came a group of Islamists. They shot, disembowelled and decapitated the tourists.

It was just one of the many forerunners of 9/11 in 2001 in New York, 7/7 in 2005 in London or 11/M as the Spanish call the train bombings in Madrid in 2004. Today, as the killing in the name of extremist political Islamist ideology increases in tempo and intelligence agencies struggle to disarm those promised a passage to heaven if they blow themselves and others up, the earlier wave of militant Islamist killing can be overlooked.

One of the constant lies of the current debate over terrorism is that it is all the fault of George Bush and Tony Blair. The best-known Swiss in Britain today is Tariq Ramadan, the most interesting of Europe's political Islamists. He wrote recently that the 'invasion of Iraq, blind support for the insane policies of George Bush, British silence on the oppression of the Palestinians have a direct bearing on the deep discontent shared by many Muslims towards the West in general, and towards Britain in particular'.

Ramadan's views are standard tropes for many on the liberal-left in Europe. Not just the left. The new centre-right government in Poland wants to leave Iraq and David Cameron said that Britain should not drop the idea of intervention. But as the families of those killed a decade ago remember those dreadful murders on the Nile, can Bush and Blair be blamed as the inspirers of the killing of Swiss tourists? Or what in 1995 inspired the Paris Metro bombing which killed eight? The 1995 Islamist campaign of violence in France was financed from London by the Algerian Islamist fundamentalist Rachid Ramda. British ministers, lawyers and judges protected Ramda from French justice for a full decade. Finally in 2005, Ramda was sent back to face the justice he was long protected from. He has just been sentenced to life.

Then comes the argument that Osama bin Laden was, as London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, puts it 'a simple businessman until he met the CIA' which encouraged him to launch jihad in Afghanistan against the dying Soviet empire. But this does not explain why Islamists killed, in cold blood, Anwar Sadat, the courageous Egyptian president who went to the Knesset to talk peace with Israel long before Blair was in Parliament and before the Soviets arrived in Kabul.

So if we follow history's thread back we have to leave the contemporisation of the debate. Something deeper is going on. To discuss this in religious terms is repugnant for many. But history is full of faiths sanctioning political murders to advance a cause.

The violence of faith takes many forms. A university report has just been published on the material available in British mosques, Muslim schools and bookshops. It reveals a violent brew of anti-semitism, misogyny and homophobia which inculcates a loathing for fellow citizens who do not conform to the rules of Islamist ideologues.

The report scrupulously quotes extracts from books and pamphlets widely available in mosque bookshops. The response of the Muslim Council of Britain was to attack the research. Instead of calling on mosques to empty themselves of such hate material, the MCB called for the report to be ignored. This arrogant dismissal does no service to Muslims.

Some are trying to move forward. As a young militant, Tariq Ramadan made statements on Jews, gays and women which do not read well today. But at a recent debate he supported Israel's right to exist. Citing the example of Turkey's ruling Law and Development party which has its roots in political Islam, Ramadan held up the tantalising prospect of Islamist politics leaving behind its support for words and acts that have caused so much damage to Muslims over the past century.

It is not too late. Ramadan's language is elusive, debating with him is like trying to pick up mercury with a fork. At an Oxford University seminar he is the acceptable face of Islamism. But until the hate material is removed from sale and democratically accountable Muslim leaders emerge to contest the theologians of terrorism, anti-semitism, misogyny and homophobia in Riyadh, Cairo, Qatar and Tehran, the birth of democratic European Islamist politics is unlikely.